And I'm Javert!
by Argentine Rose
Summary: There are so many different interpretations of Javert, what would happen if they all met? To be honest, you probably don't want to know . . . Javert himself certainly doesn't!
1. Chapter 1

This is weird, take note!

Apologies to Victor Hugo, AmZ and Geoffrey Rush!

* * *

The first thing that Javert did after his escape from the barricade at the rue Mondetour was to go to Gisquet and make his report.

The second thing he did was go home. This step had been suggested by Gisquet, who had thought that the inspector might want to compose himself before returning to his duties. Javert, being Javert, took this friendly suggestion on behalf of the prefect as a direct order, and went.

Although he was a Spartan man who liked to consider himself indefatigable, Javert was also honest enough to admit that he was glad to be returning home, if only for half an hour or so. A little peace and quite, he reflected, could do him nothing but good since he was bone tired and could feel his feet drag like sandbags as he walked up the stairs of his tenement building.

He closed the door softly behind him, not bothering to lock it, and sank into the old cane chair by the fireplace. He must have sat there for a good ten minutes, deep in a weary stupor, before he became aware of a faint noise coming from his bedroom, a sort of scraping, scratching noise. At first he dismissed it as a mouse scuttling behind the wainscoting, but the more he listened, the more it sounded like the scratch of a badly trimmed pen accompanied by a hand tapping in an unsteady rhythm upon the desk.

He became increasingly convinced that there was someone in the room and so he got up, picked up his cane from where he had set in to rest by the fire, and walked slowly towards the door.

He pushed it open slowly with the lead tip of the cane. He had been right, there was an intruder. Javert drew himself up to his full height, and one might have sworn that his whiskers bristled like a bellicose alley cat.

"What are you doing in here?" he growled.

The stranger, a thin man with small sideburns, a sharp nose and pale, piercing eyes, looked up from Javert's desk, at which he had been writing on Javert's paper and with Javert's pen, and said in a cold, clipped voice: "I'm trying to track down Jean Valjean". Then he took a dainty pinch of snuff and returned to his work.

Javert, had he not been such a master of self-discipline, would have visibly started at the intruder's remark. As it was, the question he had been about to ask ("How did you get into my flat?") died on his lips to be instantly replaced by another.

"Who are you?"

"Inspector Javert of the Paris Prefecture," answered the intruder, "Do you wish to examine my papers?"

"Give them here!" Javert snapped, snatching the stranger's passport and peering at it intently, reasoning that an official government document would be sure to reassert Order's primacy over Chaos.

"But this is nonsense . . . These must be forged . . . I know for a fact that there is only one man named Javert serving with the Paris Force, and I am that man. I am inspector Javert."

"I'm afraid you're both wrong!" came an ironical voice from the doorway.

Javert wheeled about to get a view of this new interruption. He saw a tall, thin Roma of middle years leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded, one stork's leg crossed over the other, and a most unpleasant smile upon his face.

Javert, who was rapidly losing his patience, stamped his foot and advanced on the new arrival. The lanky gypsy merely held out his hand and purred, "I'm Inspector Javert, pleased to meet you both. Now, please explain what you are doing in my apartment."


	2. Chapter 2

"Your apartment!" came a deep, incredulous voice from the other room, "I think not!"

Javert found himself confronted by a bear of a man wearing a shabby brown coat.

"Now," the new arrival continued, "Tell me who the blue blazes you lot are – and don't give me any of that Javert guff either – "

"Because the only inspector Javert around here is me!" interrupted a balding man in a leather carriage coat who strode into the room at that moment, elbowing the burly fellow out of his way and into the doorframe, causing him to stand upon the tall Roma's foot.

"Mind what you're doing, you oaf!" snapped the gypsy.

"Why don't you tell that to baldy?" said the tall man sourly

"Alright. Watch where you're going, baldy."

The bald intruder span around, fixed the two men by the door with a dark look: "I will not be insulted by strangers in my own house!" he said in a slow, dangerous sort of voice "Now, if I may take you names, gentleman" he continued, withdrawing a notebook from his pocket"

"My name is Javert, Louis Javert"

"As, coincidentally, is mine" snickered the Roma, who was beginning to see the funny side of all this.

"What, you mean your name's Louis?" enquired the gaillard calling himself Louis Javert.

"No, it's Javert"

"Oh do stop being ridiculous, Javert is my name and I don't know what kind of game you're trying to play –" fumed the man at the desk, who had definitely not seen the funny side of the business.

Javert himself, who was still standing midway between the desk and the door looking rather lost, was having a hard time seeing any side of the business. He felt a confusion similar in style and proportion to the time when Madeleine had order him to set free some rabid tart that had just tried to claw out his eyes.

"– I am the one and only – "

"Inspector Javert"

"If you don't mind – "

"And I'd still like to know – "

"- how you got in here"

Javert felt giddy and began to sway slightly.

"I am inspector Javert of the Paris prefecture," said the bald man.

"No you're not, you loon!" retorted the tall man.

"I really don't see any point in turning this into a slanging match," said the Roma with horrible amiability.

"If you would all just shut up! I am trying to work on the recapture of a dangerous felon," snarled the man at the desk.

"Don't you tell me to shut up!"

"– I demand to know what the devil – "

"– and then I'll haul all your arses down to the nearest police post!"

"SILENCE! BE SILENT THE LOT OF YOU"

A hush descended over the room. You might have heard a pin drop had there been a tailor by to drop one. All eyes were fixed on Javert, who folded his arms across his chest took a deep breath: "Now, that I have your attention – "

He then promptly lost their attention as the curtain of the bed at the far end of the room were drawn back to reveal a figure in a grey nightshirt. He was a tall man, snub nosed and hard eyed with bushy grey side-whiskers.

"Oh Jean-Jean, is that you?" Then he looked around at the five other men with a simpering air of coquetry on his broad face

"Why, what fine strong lads you are! My name's Javert. What's yours?"


	3. Chapter 3

The man in the nightgown then leant forward on the bed and blew a kiss at the fellow at the writing desk, who fell of his chair in shock.

"Get away from me you pederast!" he cried in consternation, "I am an officer of the law!"

He crawled away from the smirking man on the bed, only to be men at the door by the tall gypsy, who bent down and whispered in his ear, "The two aren't mutually exclusive, you know"

The blue-eyed man looked up at the Roma with the dawnings of a horrified comprehension written on his face. As if to underline the point, the tall man leant forward and began to make kissing noises.

Meanwhile, the bald man had approached Javert and said that, untoward interruptions aside, they should really sort out this stolen identities business. Everyone was so busy, debating, teasing, perving or cowering in fear that the arrival of another bewhiskered and greatcoated man who exclaimed, "What the bloody hell is going on here!" went largely unnoticed.

They must have continued in this vein for a good few minutes until someone decided that it was time to take action. That someone was the man in the bed. He hitched up his nightgown (which, incidentally, was rather skimpy) and launched himself across the room like a pouncing tiger on the unsuspecting Roma by the door. He landed on top of the poor fellow, knocking him to the floor, and for a few moments the pair looked into each other's eyes, the one shocked and the other . . . well, I shall leave you to imagine. Then the man in the nightgown leant forward and tried to kiss his prey. The gypsy's eyes widened and he began to crawl away, commando style, while the other man clung to his legs, whimpering endearments.

"Yes", said Javert, "yes, I think you're right. We really do have to do something about this. What did you say you name was again?"

"Inspector Javert," replied the bald man, "of the Paris Surété. And yours?"

"Javert, of the Paris prefecture. Delighted to meet you."


	4. Chapter 4

In a garden there sat a girl, reading in the shadow of a high hedge. She did not notice that there was far too much alliteration in the opening sentence, something with caused it to resemble Old English verse (In so far as one can really write quantative verse in modern English, that is) because she was so immersed in her book. She was a young girl with auburn hair, grey eyes, a graceful throat and a nose that was "the despair of painters and the delight of poets". She was clad in a long black skirt and simple white chemise.

She was not Cosette. Partly this is because Cosette was a fictional character whereas this young woman was very much flesh and blood, partly it was because Cosette would never be caught swearing or quarrelling or going out and getting ridiculously drunk with her ex and then suffering for it the next day as this girl all too frequently did. Mostly, however, she was not Cosette because her parents had chosen to call her Sophia instead. She was, I regretfully inform the reader, one of that loathsome species, the self-insert, although she did not yet realize this.

Sophia sat in her garden idly reading Les Misérables and thinking that everything after the third round had been a mistake and that one should never go to the pub with a lawyer. She was leafing through the book without really concentrating when a chapter heading caught her eye. _"Too Many Javerts Spoil the Broth"_ it said.

"Now, I don't recall that chapter," she remarked to herself, "What the blazes in Norman Denny up to?"

She read on: _"The first thing that Javert did after his escape from the barricade at the rue Mondetour was to go to Gisquet and make his report."_

Curioser and curioser . . .

As she read on, her only though was "I must have dropped some serious acid last night – I'm hallucinating multiple Javert!" Although she did not believe that multiple Javerts were entirely a bad thing, she decided to fetch a class of water and see if it cleared her head.

It did not, since, after draining the cup, she read _"The man in the nightgown then leant forward on the bed and blew a kiss at the fellow at the writing desk, who fell of his chair in shock."_

"What on earth is going on?"

"**Well you might ask**" boomed a voice from no-where in particular. I would say that it was an authorial voice, but since I'm not actually speaking at the moment and we already have one self-insert, I won't. I think that I shall call it The Voice Of Reason.

"**Dire things have come to pass**," boomed The Voice Of Reason, "**And you are to blame**"

"Me"

"**Yes, you**"

"Couldn't have been"

"**Then who?"**

"Er . . . I dunno. But the point is, I didn't steal no cookies out of no jar. Or, rather, I haven't been screwing with canon."

"**So**," said The Voice Of Reason with awful solemnity, "**you do not recognize the man named variously Javert or Javart. Born in Bretagne in 1780 to one Dolcequita, card-reader, thief and vagabond, and christened Louis Andoche – "**

"Ok. Point taken. But just what do you expect me to do about it?"


	5. Chapter 5

"**What do I **_**expect**_** you to do about it?" **Boomed the Voice of Reason, "**What do **_**I **_**expect **_**you**_** to do about it? WHAT DO I EXPECT YOU TO DO ABOUT IT?"**

"Um, yeah, that was kinda the question I was asking - ?"

"**Oh, sorry – got a bit carried away with the whole 'pattern of three' rhetoric thingy. This game was so much easier when one could just appear as a burning bush or a talking raccoon or some shit like that! Now, where was I?"**

"What do I expect you to do about it?"

"**What do you expect me to do about what?"**

"Oh give me strength!"

"**What?"**

"Nothing"

"**What?"**

"It's just that I always imagined that when one started hearing voices they'd tell you to stab people at the bus stop or that Elvis and Princess Diana had started an experimental dubstep collective and wanted you to play the triangle on a B side track! I just honestly didn't expect that the voice in my head would have less of a clue than I do! You were asking me what I propose to do about it"

"**About what?" **

"The Javerts"

"**Oh yes! Sorry – it's just that I'm as old as literature itself, it's hard to keep track sometime! So, what are you going to do about it?"**

"Um, I really don't know – ignore it and hope it goes away? That worked with everything except my dissertation. What would you suggest?"

"**I would suggest that you venture into the realm of the imagination, repair the plot that was broken and save Javert, Les**** Misérables**** and, in a more general way, literature itself, from the horrors of misinterpretation and well intentioned if ultimately misguided fannish tinkering!"**

"You mean go upstairs, write a final chapter for the story in which everything reverts to cannon, post it on fanfictionnet and it will be all done, bish bash bosh, by pub opening time?"

"**Not quite. I want you to, in a very real and physical manner, immerse yourself in the text – embark upon the hero's journey into the world of the text, the kingdom of the imagination and – once again I must stress that this will be in very tangible, some might say even visceral, manner and sort out the mess you've made."**

"No"

"**But you are young and brave and pure of heart – perfect for a quest!"**

No, I am tired and hung over and kind of freaked out, which is not at all the same thing. So, no, I am not going to be the librarian version of Frodo Baggins and help you out on this!"

"**Why?"**

"Because this is completely mental and I just cannot fucking deal with it right now, ok!"

"**So what are you going to do?"**

"I am going to stop writing fanfic and pretending to be a film director, get a proper job with an actual salary in a company that makes _The Devil Wears Prada_ look warm and friendly, I am going to blow my wages on booze and clothes in an effort to cheer myself up, spend countless miserable hours on the underground and die a little inside. I am, in short, going to grow up!"

"**But I don't think you quite understand the chaos you have unleashed – one day you will have to take up the quest of narrative and put things right. And anyway, I'll always be able to find you –every time you read a book, watch a play, write a poem, I'll be there!"**

"That's a chance I'm willing to take. Now be a good little deranged disembodied voice and cut along now!"

Meanwhile, back in Inspector Javert's tenement apartment, things were going from bad, to very bad indeed.


	6. Chapter 6

It took Javert, aided by the Balding Javert of the _Sûreté, the thin blue eyed man and a stocky new arrival with a risible fringe, a full half an hour to lock the perving, half dressed, bewhiskered madman in the armoire and barricade the door shut with the writing desk (Barricade! Oh the irony! The idea of going back to the barricade on the rue Mondetour and being menaced at gun point by Jean Valjean and that strange blond kid was actually rather inviting now!)_

_They had, regrettably, not been helped at all by the tall Roma and the gaillard calling himself Louis Javert. These two had remained leaning against the door frame laughing hysterically and cracking fatuous remarks. When Javert had finally managed to slam the door shut and the blue eyed man, aided by an obscenely handsome new arrival in very tight white britches, had pushed the desk up against the armoire and locked the doors, the Roma had smiled, turned to his irritating companion and drawled, "You know, I almost enjoyed that! Shall we let him out and watch the entire spectacle again?"_

_"My dear fellow, there no law against being a complete mentalist which justifies these fine gentlemen in front of us keeping the poor unfortunate in a wardrobe. They might be persuaded to convey the poor specimen to Charenton if we let him out tout de suite – "_

_"You'll do no such thing, you wretch!" barked Javert, "you'll stand there and not get us into any more trouble than we're already in thank you!"_

_"Oooh," giggled the Roma, "it's almost like he thinks he's a policeman!"_

_At that very moment the door flew open with a mighty crash and five men stood silhouetted in the doorway. Five tall and imposing men wearing greatcoats and brandishing swagger sticks._

_"Oh in the name of the Lord Almighty what now?" hissed Javert_

_"That was my __foot__" whined Louis the gaillard, who had been standing dangerously close to the door when it opened and who was, for once, no longer smiling._

_"Who are you? Let's see your papers!" snapped the blue eyed fellow._

_"Oh we don't need papers!" beamed the leader of the band, a grey eyed, feral looking man (who Javert had to admit did look a bit like him – only with an antipodean lilt) "My name's Philippe Javert and these are my friends – Roger, Terrence, Earl and Norm. Together we are the Five Javerts!"_

_"Oh what? Just what?" enquired the policeman with the stupid fringe before shrugging and sitting down on the floor, convulsively rubbing his face like a man trying to ward off a migraine brought on by profound existential despair._

_"The Five Javerts!" beamed the antipodean joyfully, "And we're going to sing for you! Aren't we Norm?"_

_"Oh are we ever, Phil!" responded an equally nauseatingly jolly black man with worryingly white teeth, waggling his hands alarmingly._

_"Are we ready boys? On a one, and a one and a one, two, three, four!"_

_"Stars!"_

_"In their multitudes"_

_"Scarce to be counted"_

_"Filling the darkness" ("filling the darkness!")_

_"With order and light!"_

_"And harmonise now boys – jazz hands, nice big smiles!"_

_"You are the sentinels – "_

_Javert found himself being nudged in the ribs by a lugubrious, pudgy fellow with a comb over who regarded him with cowlike sadness for a moment and then asked "Have you ever considered suicide, mon ami? Because I am considering it."_


	7. Chapter 7

"_Run, run runaway, runaway baby_

_Before I put my spell on you_

_You'd better get get getaway_

_Get away darlin'_

_Before I put my spell on you"_

Unfortunately the next verse of the song _"Your poor heart will – etcetera"_ was somewhat ruined by the distant and alarming sound of screams in the distance.

Removing an ear bud from one ear, Sophia sat up from where she had been slumped, dozing across two seats, and looked blearily around the train carriage. Her IPod still pumped out a tinny chorus

"_So you'd better run, run runaway, runaway baby!"_

The screams, too, were still audible, but in a rather more indistinct way. They could easily have been the wind.

They were the wind, Sophia decided. _'Bloody weather! Bloody Wales!_' And, as the train didn't appear to be moving, she added a mental '_Bloody First Great Western Trains'_ for good measure.

She looked out of the window but it was by now pitch dark, and the neon lighting inside the carriage ensured that nothing could be seen of the world outside, only her own face reflected back at her, pale and slightly distorted. Outside the screaming/the wind – no, no, no the screaming wind – continued to blow a hoolie.

"Oh arse! I've overslept and now I'm in Swansea! Bloody Swansea – Lord Almighty knows how much it will cost to get a taxi back to Cardiff this time of night!"

She poked her head over the top of her seat and began to look around the carriage properly.

It was empty.

Normally she wouldn't have been worried by this. In fact, Sophia was the kind of person who did everything possible to ensure that she had as much space to herself on the train – dumping down her suitcase in a surly fashion, sprawling in her seat with extremely loud and aggressive gangsta rap on her headphones and a box of take away sushi for dinner. On all but the most crowded trains this soon ensured that no-one wanted to be within three rows of her – and if anyone was foolish enough to ignore these warning signs, she would launch into a fit of convulsive coughing that would have left Camille in awe.

At this precise moment, however, the deserted carriage worried her.

"_Se I ain't trying to hurt you baby_

_See I just wanna work you baby!"_

"That's quite enough of that, Bruno Mars!" Sophia hissed, turning off the iPod pettishly before trying to reason with herself; "You've just fallen asleep and missed your stop, that's all. And the only reason there's no-one else in the carriage is because no-one bloody wants to go to Swansea! All you need to do now is find a guard, explain that you fell asleep, appeal to his sense of chivalry – pull the full 'oh pleeeease, Monsieur L'inspecteur' routine if needs be – and everything will be right as rain!"

Still, as she picked up her handbag and set off to the last place she had seen a guard (by the buffet) Sophia found herself shivering.

Three carriages later, and having found no conductor (nor, indeed, any of her fellow passengers) Sophia was feeling considerably less chipper. The wind had risen to a feverish gale force, buffeting the train so much that it actually shook faintly - and its keening moan was beginning to sound alarmingly like screams again now that she knew she was more than likely the only person on the train.

"What if there's been an accident," she mused, "What if the train has crashed or been evacuated and I have just slept through it all in a rather Donna Noble-ish way?"

More for something to than because she thought it would actually help, she pushed down the glass sliding window on the door and tried the door handle. Unexpectedly, it gave and the door swung open, letting in a gust of freezing winter air (which, given that it was actually April, was somewhat odd)

Aware that it maybe wasn't the smarted thing to do, but worried that the train might be about to do something overdramatic and Casualty-ish like explode, Sophia stepped tentatively down to the ground – which was a lot further away than she had expected, due to the absence of a platform.

"Toto, I don't think we're in Swansea anymore!"

The melted bronze Gaudi-esque horror of the ground – which really should have been concrete or grass – was the first giveaway behind this remarkably astute assertion. The second give away were the curly, misshapen red plasticine mountains on the horizon, and the purple vaporous clouds that scudded grimly about their tips. The wind was even louder here, more insistent, and contained distinct, if disembodied, worlds, most of which seemed to be "Pain", "Woe", "Misery" or other worlds to that effect.

"So, it really was screaming," Sophia mused, "Who knew! Urgh!"

She bent down to touch the oozing metallic ground. It was slightly warm to the touch, which she recoiled at, properly spooked for the first time. Which, when you think abut the sort of place that might well be dark, with molten ground and air full of screaming, was understandable.

"Oh, oh" she moaned.

"**Don't be upset,"** came a voice. We might as well say The Voice as even after an interlude of several years Sophia recognised it. **"You've done rather well in evading me – too well in fact – so I had to take steps. Don't worry; no-one is going to hurt you. Just follow me!"**

"What?"

"**Well, of course he now denies it. You'd expect that of a con! But he couldn't run forever – no, not even Jean Valjean!"** The Voice sang (badly).

"Well, it's reassuring to hear that you're still a frakking idiot! Firstly, I'm not Jean Valjean and, secondly, how am I meant to follow a disembodied voice?"

"**Ok, point!"**

3


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